Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Monday February 15, 2010 @06:31PM
from the too-many-g's dept.

Verizon has announced that it is on track to roll out their new 4G LTE service using the 700 MHz band that it acquired in the recent FCC auction. Targeted first towards USB air cards for laptop customers, the service will be extended to cell phones and other mobile devices with embedded LTE eventually. Testing in Boston and Seattle should conclude in the next couple of months and commercial deployments should follow soon thereafter. "Lynch said getting voice to work over LTE has been particularly challenging. But that challenge is getting resolved as Verizon and other members of the GSMA announced Monday they are supporting a standard that uses IMS technology to deliver voice services over LTE. Still, more work needs to be done. Until a solution is complete, Verizon will use its CDMA network to provide voice services. And the LTE network will be used for data. Eventually, when voice over LTE becomes a reality, Verizon will use that technology. Verizon will also have to integrate EV-DO into its LTE offering to ensure that customers can switch to the 3G EV-DO network when the 4G LTE network is not available. Even though Verizon is being aggressive in building its network, it won't happen overnight."

That's the plan. LTE will use SIP with QoS to guarantee maximum latency and jitter. To all of the people saying you can't use VoIP: how stupid are you? Almost all voice calls in the western world go over packet switched networks and have for most of the last decade, and most of the last three decade in some cases. Do you think things magically get worse because those packets have an IP header? If you make a landline call anywhere in the UK or Canada, you are using VoIP.

The problem is that some of the standards for telephony services over LTE (which is an all-IP network) have not quite been finalised yet. This includes things like SMS bridges and the standards for mapping SIP addresses to phone numbers.

The lack of voice over LTE is because it will use the same data channel for voice (i.e. VoIP). So it's not like any of the hardware has to be change. The reason it's not being deployed now is that there's no consensus over how voice should be done on LTE. I'm thrilled that VZW is waiting. LTE will be the global standard, and it will be good if they maintain full compatibility with global networks. Unfortunately, VZW is one of the first companies to deploy it - it appears the rest of the world is lagging behind.

As for it needing to retain CDMA on phones, that's also good. IT will be a while before VZW deploys LTE with the same coverage as CDMA. This is needed for backwards compatibility.

While I understand it's a slow process, consider that VZW, unlike most of their competitors, is actively pushing forward with LTE.